Secrets of the Instant Pot

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“You’re an idiot,” she said, nicely. “An hour and a half from start to finish on a Saturday night is nothing! But if you’re doing that stuff on a weeknight after work, you’re using the machine wrong.”

This wasn’t as embarrassing to me as you might think. I have a healthy capacity for self-deception. I really did think I could make a pork shoulder that would ordinarily take nine hours in the oven in, like, 35 minutes. So I was wrong. That happens all the time. I shrugged and asked how to win the midweek pressure-cooker game. She said: shredded chicken, for midweek tacos.

So: 6 or so chicken thighs, ideally skinless, maybe boneless, too. Put them in the pot along with a small can of diced tomatoes and a seeded, chopped jalapeño, along with a tablespoon of chile powder and a little cumin, maybe some smoked paprika. (You could use a cup or so of salsa verde instead, if you have any around, for a green version.) Set the machine to high pressure for 14 minutes, manual release, and then shred the meat back into the sauce and serve with warm tortillas, cheese, whatever you like.

You could make noodles! Three choices. First, take a look at Florence Fabricant’s recipe for spicy Sichuan noodles, which she learned from the great BBC television chef Ken Hom. Second, consider a Yunnan-inspired version of the dish, rice noodles with spicy pork and herbs, that Tejal Rao secured from the chef Simone Tong in Manhattan. Or, third, you could take up this recipe for coconut noodles that Amanda Hesser picked up from Ma Thanegi, a writer in Myanmar who called it a dish “so easy, the worst cook in the world could make it.”

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I’m kind of into this outdoor oven situation the Maine restaurateurs Steve and Michelle Corry have in the yard of their home in Cape Elizabeth, which was featured in Yankee magazine the other day.

And nothing to do with food, but Jon Caramanica has us listening to a lot of nothing,nowhere. lately. Here’s his report. I’ve been enjoying, with a kind of shocked, disturbed amazement, John King’s 1996 novel, “The Football Factory,” about soccer hooligans in London and the dawn of the surveillance state. And do read this accounting of an outdoor-lifestyle con man, in Outside.